Daily Bread

'You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'

With these words, Jesus was not correcting an older moral code. The Law of Moses was clear that one should love one's neighbour, and the writings in Leviticus say absolutely nothing about hating one's enemy! So where was Jesus getting this 'hate your enemy' thing from?

We humans are particularly cunning and clever when it comes to justifying our actions, and I suggest that what people were doing was extrapolating or interpreting the Mosaic laws to serve their own purposes. Surely, if the law says we must 'love our neighbours' then it means we should 'hate our enemies'? Perhaps then, people had turned this into an idiom that, rolling off the tongue, had been widely shared — "You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy."

The thing is, human nature hasn't changed in 2000 years. Within the Church we have witnessed the rise of fundamentalism (incorrectly labelled as evangelicalism) where there is a strict ethical code and our virtue is defined less by loving others but by the 'sins' from which we abstain. For example, you are defined as virtuous or righteous Christian if you present only as cis-gender and heterosexual, if you do not listen to certain types of music, if you keep your skirts a certain length, if you don't smoke, women are subservient to male leadership, and so on. Of course, what comes with this is the 'othering' or 'labelling' of people or groups (with its associated hatred, gossip, slandering, and anger), which is doing the exact opposite of what Jesus commanded!

Jesus confronted this way of thinking head on — returning to the original law found in Leviticus — but more than that, he did something radical and extend the law by commanding his listeners to, "Love your enemies." So who are our enemies?

Our enemies are anything in this world that goes against the grain of God's love — anything that is working against God's ministry of reconciliation. This week I was utterly shocked to hear of a baby who died in Bermuda — a highly developed, stratospherically wealthy, first-world country — because the parents didn't have health insurance to cover the cost of the child being flown to the USA for treatment. What shocked me was that people think that is perfectly acceptable! WTF? The injustice — the enemy — is our flawed health-care system.

Of course, there are a zillion examples of where we encounter the 'enemy', and one only has to watch the news to witness a tide of hatred on a global scale. The solution? To love. Not that I should love the healthcare system in Bermuda! No, but swamp it with love, pray that it might change, love those that work in it, and speak God's love and justice into it wherever it may be encountered.

Okay, so changing healthcare systems might seem overwhelming, but what are the smaller enemies, injustices, or prejudices that you encounter in your daily life — at school, home, work, or at play? To whom and in what circumstances can you extend God's love?

Last night, one of our dear friends gave Helen and I bracelets to wear at Bermuda Pride. Strung on the straps are silver letters that spell out 'LOVE WINS'. Amen! Yes it does!

Holy God
Forgive me when I have
thought of myself as
virtuous because I have
abstained from 'sins'
committed by 'others'.
Give me a humble heart
to recognise my own pride
and fill me with a radical
and transforming love.
Now and forever.